Mouthwash
March 3, 2019 § 2 Comments
I had a good ride this morning. It started at 7:00. It was dry as a bone despite the weather forecast of 100% rain probability. Stupid weather forecast. If you live according to that crap, you miss so many great things in life.
200 yards into my ride it began to rain very hard. Thankfully I didn’t have a rain jacket so I got soaked, but the first few seconds of the ride were awesome, which goes to show how you need to have the courage to ignore the weather forecast, which is always wrong.
I rode with Kristie for an hour in the pouring rain. She hadn’t brought a rain jacket, either. The Wheatgrass 2.0 was supposed to start at 8:00 AM, pointy-sharp, and four other idiots actually showed up.
One of them was Evens Stievenart. He is one of the best riders I have ever had the pleasure of getting shelled by. He was angry at the rain and took it out on us. We had to go full gas to hold his wheel getting up and over the golf course. His rear tire shot a continuous plume of oil-infused, chemical, filthy water, mixed with grit, into my face and mouth.
The rain kept falling.
We decided to skip Stathisridge, the awful climb that punctuates the first part of Wheatgrass 2.0 like a harpoon in the groin but at the last minute we realized that if we skipped Stathisridge, the Wiley Greek, who lives at the top, wouldn’t see us and would think that we, like he, had decided to spend Sunday as pillow babies.
So we climbed it.
Evens waited for us at the bottom. Kristie and Vinnie decided there were better things to do than pneumonia, so that left four of us. Evens towed us to the reservoir and zipped up it. I hung desperately onto his wheel. The plume of filth continued unabated.
The rain kept falling.
Evens charged up Better Homes, but he went slow enough so that I could hang on. My threshold is his warm-up pace. We got to PV Drive again just in time to see the riders who had cut the course, including Stathisridge, showing intelligence.
The rain kept falling.
I got dropped on the wall going up De Luna and pedaled solo to the Domes. Evens was waiting; he had been there for a couple of hours. I ate some nuts and raisins. We waited for the others and then all descended together.
The rain kept falling.
Evens drilled it through Portuguese Bend and up the Glass Church. I jumped him past Terranea, and our remaining passenger rolled off the back like a spent artillery shell. Evens countered and I clawed on. He eased up and let me sprunt by for the imaginary win. By now I had drunk a liter or more of oily, gritty filthwater.
The rain kept falling.
We turned up Hawthorne and Evens rode away, I guess he was tired of babysitting. I got home covered in muck and soaked to the skin. When I showered a huge bolus of black sludge dissolved and ran out of both my ears, volcanically.
I toweled off and looked out the window.
The rain wasn’t falling any more.
___________________
END
Cycling in the South Bay 
Almost as good as (not) being there!
Yours, etc.,
Pillowbaby
Haaaaa! Still digesting the radiator fluid.